Happy New Year, 1969

In the fall of 1968, I was in ninth grade at Munich International School. Nixon had just been elected president and the Apollo 8 astronauts were about to orbit the moon. I was obsessed with Romeo and Juliet, having just seen Zeffirelli’s movie with Olivia Hussey and Leonard Whiting. For December break, my family drove to Rome via Florence, Siena, and San Gimignano. Not too shabby as school vacations go.

In these excerpts from my memoir-in-progress, Where Is Luv? A Teenager’s Diary of Hope, Passion, and Total Confusion, it's clear some things have changed . . . and some most assuredly have not. Happy New Year, 2009! I hope it is a year of love and peace.

December 27, 1968
(2 months till 15)

Visited Sistine Chapel and the whole bit. It was OK. Fantastic work and realism but TOO much! Sculptures are nice, though. Watched a marvelous and exciting Apollo splashdown and recovery on TV! Wow! The moon!! It’s really a great breakthru!

4 days till 1969. 62 days till my birthday. 9 days till Munich. 10 days till school.

December 29

Went to impressive Baths of Caracalla, with little kiddies running around and to Palazzo Farnese. Nice frescoes. And to these fantastic ruins at Ostia Antica! Wow! Buildings, paintings, bathrooms, tunnels, statues, palaces, theaters, warehouses, stores. A real civilizazione! 100,000 people!! (200-300 AD?)

December 30

Slept latish, took bathio. Visited statue of Moses and San Sebastian mosaic. Walked to Pantheon. Saw USA sailors who “wowed” at me. Wow! Gotta goa toa bedda. Yeah? Bene! Molto bene! Buona sera!

December 31

Well, this is it! The end of another year. So what? It’s just 366 days gone by with 365 more to come! But it’s traditional to make a big thing. So I will. Today we saw some church, which was lovely, and the Catacombs—ancient and smelly but interesting.

News: Triumph of Apollo 8; release of Pueblo crew; Israel and the Arabs clashing; Paris peace talks moving along. I hope 1969 brings more peace to earth, although I doubt it.

Resolutions? Let’s see:

1) Resist smoking. (Build feminine willpower.)
2) Try to establish better relations at home, especially with mother (be less close?).
3) Work hard in school.
4) Grow, damnit!
5) Quit swearing so much!
6) Ultra-femina: looks, attitude, actions
7) Continue interest in world.
8) Write a book.

We’re heading off now for a New Year’s party. I’ll see you next year! Arrivederci!

January 1, 1969

2:07 a.m. after really boring, wild, icky New Year’s party at Dover Hotel with a bunch yucks and fakes and icks. Last word I said in 1968 = LOVE. First word I said in 1969 = LOVE. I hope it is a year of love and peace.

Later: 11:15 p.m. after a long day. Visited San Pietro and saw Pope Paul VI and got “blessed.” Beautiful church! Climbed to top (ugh)—utterly fantastic view! Beautiful sunny chilly day and just perfect! Saw Oliver. I’m still determined to act/sing.

Back at 10. Sang songs and fooled around. At 11, I started to wash, and out from under the towel crawled a HUGE hairy spider! UGH! SHIVER! UGH!!! Donnie shivered too so Daddy (my hero) killed it! Ugh Ugh YUKH!! I itch all over.

Song from Oliver:

Where is love?
Does it come from skies above?
Is it underneath the willow tree that I’ve been dreaming of?
Where is he who I close my eyes to see?
Will I ever know the sweet hello that’s meant for only me?
Who can see where he may hide?
Must I travel far and wide
Till I am beside the someone who I can mean something to?
Where is love?

Fantastic song! It not only means so much but it fits me perfectly. Goodnite, goodnite. Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnite till it be morrow! Romeo and Juliet is fantastic! Will that ever happen to me?

Wishful Thinking

When my cable provider switched over to digital last summer, I thought I’d never get used to a whole new channel lineup and an imposing remote with 59 buttons. Now I click up, down, left, right without even looking: 311 for MSNBC and 305 for CNN, or 221 for TV Land and 117 for Comedy Central (to escape the depressing effects of the first two).

However, even with the fancy gadgetry, I can still tape only one show at a time, which requires my actually remembering to leave the TV on the channel I want to record before I go to work. No DVR. No Tivo. Maybe Santa will surprise me this year. Ho ho ho.

My ritual is recording the final few minutes of Deal or No Deal, followed by Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! That’s Channel 11 here. Shouldn’t be too hard to forget. Same time, same channel, Monday through Friday, at least when I’m out, which is most weeknights. As I unwind, stretch, and get ready for bed, I love zipping through my shows.

On Wednesday, I got home around ten, changed into my fleece pajamas, fed Sophia and Sascha, and hit the rewind button, eagerly awaiting my nightly game-show fix. PLAY. The screen displayed a green-and-white announcement: Due to power outages in your area, there is no service on this channel at this time. We regret any inconvenience. New Hampshire Public TV, Channel 9.

Channel 9? No! I meant to leave it on Channel 11! FAST FORWARD. Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it was just a glitch. I continued to fast forward through what must’ve been a half-hour’s worth of the same green-and-white message. Was I expecting the channel to have changed itself while I was out? Kind of like when I thought my dust-spewing vacuum cleaner would’ve repaired itself after three untouched months in the closet?

Nope. No Deal or Wheel or Jeopardy! tonight. I felt bereft. The empty, sad, pit-of-the-stomach-type feeling that comes when you know that what you wished for simply will not happen. No matter how hard I pressed the button, no matter how hard I wanted it, it wasn’t meant to be.

I lingered in the feeling, trying to understand it. It felt familiar and utterly unwanted. In the space of three or four minutes, I’d gone from a sense of fun anticipation to frantic denial to mournful acceptance. Over TV. But it wasn’t the content of the loss, it was the feeling of being helpless to change the reality. There was nothing I could do. What’s done is done.

Three years ago, on a regular Sunday morning, I woke up and headed outside to retrieve my Boston Globe. I saw my kitty, Jolie, lying on the living room rug, all stretched out. “Allo, Jolia! Good morning!” I said. I stepped closer. She didn’t move. She’s sleeping, I thought. Funny. Usually she greets me, nuzzling, head-butting. I walked past her and bam, it hit me, a fierce punch in the stomach, a rush of adrenaline and nausea and truth.

No. No. It can’t be. I approached. Her eyes were fixed in a stare and her tongue slightly extended from her mouth. Next to her was some food she'd vomited. Maybe she was choking! Maybe I could revive her. I knelt beside her and touched her. Her body was cold. I tried to pry her mouth open to give her an airway. Her body was stiff. Untrained in CPR, I tried to apply kitty-size compressions to her calico chest, at regular intervals. I tried to blow in her mouth, very softly.

No, Jolie, no. I didn’t want to know, but I knew. And yet I didn’t. I called my vet and left a message for the on-call doc. After a few silent minutes, I called Angell Animal Hospital and said, “I think my cat might be dead!” I asked about kitty CPR. I asked about opening her airway. The woman listened and said quietly, “She’s gone.”

“But . . . how? How? She’s only five. She wasn’t sick!”

She said, very kindly, as did my own vet who called later, that sometimes cats die suddenly, same as people. Aneurysm, cardiac arrest, stroke, random act of God. She was gone.

Numbness followed and flooding tears and, slowly, acceptance. I still think of Jolie, every day. And I thought of her on Wednesday, when, unbidden and unwanted, missing my game shows, of all things, I felt that feeling in my gut that tells me I am helpless to change reality. No matter how mundane or profound.

Every day brings a new sadness, it seems—illnesses, diagnoses, in my family, among my friends, among my friends’ families. And every day brings another reminder of the only lesson that seems to make any sense, at least to me, at least today: Life happens. Death happens. Let go. And breathe.

Short 'n' Bittersweet

I’m headed to Connecticut in the morning for Uncle Addy’s 85th birthday party. It will be good to see family and friends, but I’m sad because Addy’s struggling with health problems. We will sing skit songs and eat good food and dance and laugh and hug and cry and cherish the time we have together.

And we need to laugh. So for this week I’m posting a short diary entry from the extraterrestrial world of fifth grade, Milton School, Rye, New York. All names have been changed to protect the formerly pubescent. I’ll be presenting a longer piece that includes this entry at MORTIFIED BOSTON on January 8, 2009. Check out www.getmortified.com. Details to come!

January 6, 1965

Linda admitted that she loved Ricky. Vice versa. They said they’d kiss each other. Darn Ricky chickened out. What a double crosser. I called up Ricky and he said, Hello. I said, How could you? Now Linda hates your guts. He said, Good. I said, You love her, why don’t you kiss her? He said, Why don’t you hang up? I said, Make me. He said, Okay, I’ll hang up. I said, Go ahead, I don’t care. He did. I love him.

Flickering Innocence: JFK Remembered

It’s been 45 years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated. Today I reflect on that day with an essay that appeared in the (Westchester, NY) Journal News on November 22, 2003.

Memories and images of JFK and Camelot are everywhere as we anticipate a White House again filled with youth and “vig-ah,” hope and optimism, intellect and passion, and the brilliant smile of a brilliant man and his shining family.

I sat alone on the floor at the foot of my parents’ bed, staring up at the flickering black-and-white images. The TV was a 12-inch RCA with a green plastic exterior. I loved watching TV, but that Friday my stomach felt upside-down and inside-out. Everything felt different, as if things would never be the same.

November 22, 1963, was a special day for the fourth-grade class at Milton School in Rye, New York. Our teacher, Miss Drury, was getting married the next day and we were throwing a surprise party! Sally Lamb and I had collected nearly 14 dollars to buy a yellow-flowered casserole dish, which the white-haired saleslady wrapped in spangly gold paper.

Miss Drury never suspected a thing. We’d asked Mr. Rogers, the principal, to call her to his office. While she was gone, we brought out a cake and Hawaiian Punch and put the gift box on top of her big wooden desk so she’d see it right away. We were about to burst with excitement.

Clickety-click—here she comes! She entered, gasped, and broke into a smile shiny enough to light up the whole school. I thought she was beautiful—tall and thin, with short brown hair and dark eyes. She was 24. A real lady.

After the party, the girls jumped into our one-piece royal-blue gym uniforms. We were having square dancing and couldn’t wait! Something was funny, though, because Mr. Drago was just sitting on a stool, two fingers twisting the whistle around his neck, a real serious look on his face. He looked up and said softly, “The president was shot.”

“President Kennedy?”

“Yes. He was shot in Dallas, Texas. I just heard it on the radio.”

Nobody moved. More girls ran in squealing but quickly stopped when they heard the news. We went back to class, but the boys didn’t know yet. “Aw, neat!” said Eric Tillman, punching his right fist into his left palm. “Where’d he get shot?!”

Miss Drury told us to be quiet and pray. Sally Lamb sniffled and the boys thought that was pretty funny. Miss Drury dabbed her tears with a lacy handkerchief. No one knew what to do. The whole room felt eerie.

“Attention, attention, teachers and children,” Mr. Rogers announced over the P.A. “I have very sad news to tell you. President Kennedy just died. He was shot about an hour ago while driving in a motorcade in Dallas, Texas. They are trying to find the person who killed him. You will be dismissed at 2:30. Right now, please come to the playground while we lower the flag to half-mast.”

At home, all I could do was watch TV. The flag-draped coffin rolling through Washington on an open carriage. The rhythmic beat of the snare drum tapping TUM TUM TUM tadadada TUM TUM TUM tadadada TUM TUM TUM tadadada TUM TUM ta TUM.

I was numb. Staring at the TV, hour after hour. Watching Jackie and Caroline kneel in the rotunda, hearing about the capture of that evil man Lee Harvey Oswald. The Texas School Book Depository. The policeman who got shot too. Suddenly nothing made sense. Suddenly scary things happened and you had to try to figure them out the best you could.

Then some man Jack Ruby walked up to Oswald in the jail—he just stepped through a crowd of people and shot him in the stomach! I watched that replay at least a million times—Oswald’s twisted face, the tall sheriff with the cowboy hat lunging after Ruby, the confusion, the shouting.

In 1960, I had shaken President Kennedy’s hand at a campaign rally! He was so tan and handsome, with gleaming eyes. On TV press conferences, he always smiled and told jokes and everyone laughed. His singsong accent sounded strange to my New York ears, but it had a comforting quality. Caroline had a pony named Macaroni. Jackie spoke in a whispery voice I tried to imitate. When my family had visited the White House in 1962, I remember wishing I could move in with the Kennedys. Bright colorful rooms full of dreams and hope.

Four days of watching the flickering black-and-white images of death. It’s as if they extended beyond the screen, into the space at the foot of my parents’ bed. Black-and-white clouds merging into muted gray, a grayness that would return on many days of tragedy to follow. A gray that, right then and there, surrounded my innocence and dimmed it forever.

Bubble Wrap

I’ve only tried it once myself, but for years I’ve touted the stress-relieving benefits of bubble wrap. That’s the stuff that comes in sheets of transparent plastic, with rows and rows of air pockets designed to protect fragile items for shipping, like Swiss snow globes or crystal stemware or ceramic dogs. Handy little invention.

How satisfying it is to grab a square of the wrap and poke each bubble, one by one. Pop, pop. With minimal pressure, pressing both thumbs into the center of the circle, the trapped air releases. Ahh. It’s almost meditative. Press, pop, ahh. Press, pop, ahh.

For extreme mood states such as high anxiety or rage, bubble wrap can be placed on the floor for a healing round of toddler-esque stomping. Stomp, POP POP POP, AHH. It’s partly the physical effort and partly the accompanying sound effects that makes it so fulfilling.

In yoga class this morning, we explored the neck. Sitting with legs crossed, spine lengthened, arms gently on thighs, I lowered chin to chest. Very slowly, with awareness, extending only to my level of comfort, as instructed. Pop, pop, ahh. Raising and lowering, I felt tiny bubbles of tension release, audible only to me.

Next I turned my neck to the right, very slowly, with awareness. Pop, pop, ahh. Release. And to the left. The same. Now an infinity roll—tracing the shape of the infinity symbol, very slowly, with awareness, and then in reverse. Pockets of stress letting go, pop, pop, pop.

I don’t think about my neck too much. I should, because it’s ground zero for worry, fear, anxiety, even sadness and anger. With deeply embedded strata of muscle knots formed as a result of emotional holding and lousy computer posture, it will take more than a couple of neck rolls to achieve the fluid, loose movements my yoga teacher so easily demonstrates. But very slowly, with awareness, I’ll get there. Pop, pop, ahh.

On the ride home, Laura Carlo, the velvety-voiced morning host on Boston's WCRB classical radio, announced Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. Oh, Laura. Can’t you please feed us more than your Top-40 menu? If it isn’t Fanfare, it’s Sorcerer’s Apprentice or Greensleeves or the ubiquitous Brandenburgs. Come on. We’re starving here.

But today, mellow and accepting post-yoga, I stopped myself from pounding the off button and relaxed. Timpani stomps. Boom, boom. Pure trumpet unison quartet inviting me in, I cranked the volume. Surrounded by brass harmony and counterpoint, the open fourths and fifths reverberating, I inhaled deeply and let go, steering with my left arm, conducting smooth, swirling waves with my right. Something released. Nothing physical, rather something nameless, almost spiritual. It was like my soul softened. I felt full and alive and happy.

Pop, pop, pop. Ahhhh.

"Hope It Does Good"

March 15, 1965

Dear Diary,

President Johnson is making a speech about voter registration. Hope it does good. Asked Ricky for his class picture and he said maybe! Got a cello and I might keep it. I don’t like Cindy. No reason but I just don’t like her.

Shocking, isn't it? Despite my flagrant crush on Ricky Heidiger and my intermittent girl-feud with Cindy McCormick, I somehow put politics first on that ordinary fifth-grade day. LBJ, I hope you're listening up there, because it done did good, didn’t it?!

Like everyone else, I’m overwhelmed with thoughts, feelings, images, and memories this week—trying to grasp the reality and implications of Obama’s historic victory. So many eloquent essays and reflections have flooded the papers and TV and Internet. Here are some moments and musings of my own, and some links to savor.

Share your favorites in Comments!

Wrapping Up

• On Tuesday, after voting, partly to stave off a massive anxiety attack, I went to another calling party and reached African-American voters in Richmond, Virginia, including one Clarence Wimbish, 82, a retired Marine, who had waited in line for two hours in the rain at 6 a.m., and Ruby Taylor, 88, who giddily told me, “Baby, we all voted today, the whole household! It’s history, baby, history! We will win!”
  
  
• As if my tears weren’t drown-worthy during the midnight speech from Grant Park, I was swept out into the sea of change when the Obamas and Bidens shared the stage—realizing that the black man was the top man, the leader, the one with more power; the black family was the first family, not the second. And tears of relief because McCain and Palin and Bush and Cheney, they're over, done, toast, irrelevant. Free at last!
  
  
• Wednesday morning, driving around Watertown for a half hour in search of a New York Times. All out! Finally found one at a convenience store on a side street run by two Nepalese men who shared their joy and hope for America and the world. Everyone on the street was smiling—a sense of community far richer and a lot more fun than a Red Sox World Series win! Or two.

Random Musings

• How's Hillary?
  
  
• Who will fill Obama’s and Biden’s Senate seats? And if a governor makes the appointments, will Caribou Barbie appoint herself once Stevens is tossed? Can you see Hillary and Sarah on a committee together?
  
  
• How is it that people can take two years off from their jobs to apply for another job and not get fired?
  
  
• Will he say “Barack Hussein Obama” at the swearing-in?
  
  
• How will Sasha and Malia fare? I’m happy and sad for them. But I think they’re in good hands. Stay safe, kids. Stay real, if you can.
  
  
• That Rahm Israel Emanuel is one hunky dude.
  
  
• Did you see Obama's first press conference? JFK reincarnated. Energy, intellect, gravitas, humor, strength, actual full grammatical sentences! And that smile! Swoon.
  
  
• Is there a little girl writing in her diary this week, hoping the election of our first African-American president does good? I want to hug her and hold her tight and tell her it will. It can. It already has.
  

Debfeb's Election Faves

1. Barack Obama on The Daily Show, 10/29: So how does the Bradley Effect work if you're biracial?
   
   
2. The View on Wednesday morning—especially Whoopi Goldberg’s opening remarks.
   
   
3. Oprah’s Post-Election Special, with a stirring panel discussion, including David Gergen, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., John Lewis, Gloria Steinem, and Peggy Noonan.
   
   
4. Harry Smith interviews Maya Angelou, who recites “I Rise” on The Early Show.
   
   
5. “Song of Purple Summer,” a hopeful anthem from the soon-to-be-departing-from-Broadway-oh-no-my-life-is-over Spring Awakening.
   
   
6. Judith Warner’s powerful essay, “Tears to Remember,” on the 11/7 NYT blog.
   
   
7. The Pointer Sisters perform “Yes We Can” on Soul Train, 1973!

Oh Yes We Can I Know We Can Can, Yes We Can Can, Oh Why Can't We If We Wanna, Yes We Can Can!

Moving On

By Thursday, I was 90 percent vocally normal post-tonsillectomy, so I was excited to attend another MoveOn.org Call for Obama party.

I love calling parties—schmoozing with smart, likeminded people, and feeling useful. I enjoy talking to voters in states that count, unlike Marxist Massachusetts. And the free munchies are a bonus. Yay, Democrats for Fruit Plates and Homemade Chocolate Chip Cookies. Plus you never know what single, straight, available liberal man might show up.

MoveOn parties are open to anyone. You just click some buttons and pick a destination from a list of local hosts—some have politically correct warnings like “we have two dogs, one cat, and serve peanuts” or “three steps up, no other access.” Sometimes I’ll choose the closest one, sometimes I’ll venture farther to the one with the best title, such as “Obamarama.”

Once you click the “Yes, I’ll be there” button, you get the host’s name (usually first only), street address, and time. I confess to paranoia on behalf of these people who post their address on the Internet for all to see—come on over, we don’t prescreen. If I opened my home to total strangers, the first thing I’d do is hide any medications. I’ve been working with drug addicts for years, and they’re awfully creative.

Last night, Carol and Paul opened their beautiful hillside Victorian to a group of about 15 strangers, mostly middle-aged, some experienced callers, some not. We reviewed the call script and got down to it. I got three lists of 14 first names, all living in Ohio. Folks on the list are MoveOn members—the goal is to sign them up to volunteer this weekend at their local campaign office.

Carol and Paul had ample space for the group to spread out, so I staked out my turf at a small round table at the end of a full-length granite-topped kitchen island. Cellphone charged and ready to go, I began pressing buttons.

A man picked up and I asked for Marjorie. He said it was Trick or Treat night and she was at the door, passing out candy. One night early? Turns out they have town football on Friday nights. Must not be an Orthodox Jewish enclave, I'd gather. “We’ve got a ghost and a Barbie and a soldier in camouflage here,” he said, “but I’ll get my wife. She’s a witch. I mean, she’s not a witch, she’s dressed as a witch.” Marjorie the Witch said she’s canvassing for Obama this weekend. You go, Marjorie.

Mostly I got machines, or people who were already volunteering. One confided he was calling for MoveOn but had to keep it a secret from his neighbors. Not only is the area non-Jewish but it’s heavily Republican.

I caught some snippets from the kitchen alcove—the caller was a nice-looking guy in his forties (wedding ring, oh well). “Oh, you’re getting married this weekend? Well, good luck to you! But don’t forget to vote on Tuesday.” Or, “Oh, you’re loading your moving van right now? Well, have you voted yet? No? And you’re moving two hours away? Make sure you go back and vote on Tuesday.” Not everything stops for the election. Life goes on.

After a break for some crudités and candy corn, I dialed another number. Someone with a deep voice answered and I asked for Brittany. “This is Brittany,” the person replied. “Umm, it is?” “Yes.” Uh huh. Something’s off. Maybe he doesn’t want Brittany to come to the phone, but maybe Brittany has a bad cold. I pressed on.

“This is Debbie, I’m a volunteer with MoveOn.org and we’re reaching out to members in your area to work at the local office this weekend talking to voters. Are you available to help Obama get elected?” At which point, Brittany said, slowly and very deliberately, “We don’t work for niggers.”

I felt an instant wave of heat and anger, but I quickly said, “I see. Thank you for your time,” and hung up. Whoa. Deep breath. No, do not engage with a racist. He just wanted to shock me. Let it be. I debriefed with the others, who were supportive.

On my last call, I reached Sirhan. Sirhan was young and cheerful and not only agreed to volunteer on Saturday but knew exactly where the Democratic headquarters were. “Thanks for your help,” I said. "Have fun!" “Thank you for all you do,” he answered.

Come Tuesday, and it can’t come soon enough, I’ll be thinking of you, Sirhan, my evening’s success. You’re one of the 8,724 swing-state volunteers we recruited for this weekend, according to MoveOn.

And I’ll be thinking of you, too, Brittany, because if the polls and the mood of this country are true, you, my dear, will wake up on Wednesday to a new reality, and you will have to deal, like it or not, with President Barack Obama.

It’s time to move on, Brittany. The world is changing. At last.

Small Bites

I munched a banana yesterday. It wasn’t easy, but with a little angling and careful nibbling, it went down, so I count it as solid food—the first since October 7.

In celebration of that milestone, I offer some tidbits to munch on this week, from a bedroom mystery solved to tales of the bar-tailed godwit, and some random musings in-between.

Fall Foliage

For a couple of weeks now, I’ve noticed tiny, crisp, dark flakes, almost like miniature leaves, scattered at the head of my bed. I’ve been sweeping them off the sheets with curiosity, half-heartedly pondering their source and purpose, but not committing myself to a full-scale investigation. Must be the cats. Must be something I trailed in when I grabbed my Boston Globe from the front stoop wearing only my socks. But they reappeared every day.

I looked up at the ceiling. Nothing. I shook my bed pillows for leakage. Nothing. I wondered if dandruff could somehow transform from white to black as a result of chronic insomnia or the aftereffects of general anesthesia.

I took a deep breath and examined the cats—dreading the discovery of some exotic scourge lurking in their fur. Nothing.

After a triumphant night’s sleep, my head cleared yesterday enough to identify the culprit. Since the surgery, I’ve been sleeping propped up with a crescent-shaped, neck-conforming pillow behind my head. I lifted the flap on its underside and spotted a minuscule opening at the zipper. Shake-shake. Buckwheat! I zipped it tight.

I’m so glad it’s not the plague.

Amazon's Kindle

Nothing says "you’re not completely well" like watching daytime TV. But I gave myself permission to watch Oprah yesterday and got sucked in to her frenetic and passionate pitch for Amazon’s new gadget, Kindle, which I’d heard about but hadn’t fully grasped.

It’s a handheld device onto which you can download newspapers and books, entire books, hundreds or (with extra memory) thousands of books, for an average of $9.99 each. I was enthralled and horrified. What will happen to libraries? How will this affect book deals? I want to hold my book when I sell it, grab its cover, turn its pages.

Then again, how amazing would it be to create your own portable library? Pretty cool. It costs $359, way out of my league. But if you’re in a different league, you can get one for $50 off through November 1 by going to amazon.com and entering the special coupon code OPRAHWINFREY.

I guess there’s some redemption in daytime TV after all.

Fish Wrapping

After reading James Carroll’s column in Monday’s Globe, "Courage, wisdom in an age of fear," about the threat of violence against Barack Obama, I wrote a letter to the editor. The editor called two hours after I hit "send" to verify my name and confirm that my letter was exclusive to them. Yup. No guarantees, but cool.

Around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday, tossing and turning as usual, I went online to see if the morning edition was up. There it was! As a writer, it’s always nice to see one’s words in print. Except they had changed one phrase, politicizing my point in a way I wouldn’t have intended and purposely avoided. My thoughts swirled. Oh no! Oh well. I’ll write them. What’s the point? Did they distort the meaning? Not that much. I like my phrase better, I chose my words carefully. In the last paragraph, I had written "For Obama himself to say it aloud, Yes, there is risk in a risky world, is an empowering act...." Shh. Relax. Let go. It’s only a letter to the editor.

But they changed it to "For Obama himself to say it aloud in referring to the shouts of the crowd at McCain-Palin rallies is an empowering act...." Ugh! Ptooey! Political and klunky. I’ve had my stuff edited before, cut, condensed, altered without attribution. But this just stuck in my newly opened throat.

Ah well, you know what they say, today’s newspaper is tomorrow’s fish wrapping, right? No more. Now it’s online for eternity, including on my Google search. Shh. Relax. Save your moral indignation for the important things, like Sarah Palin’s Saks spree or those idiot racist rants about Obama and his grandmother.

Click here to read the letter.

It’s Saturday now. I’m over it.

Winged Migration

Sticking with the Globe theme, I cringed my way through the usual murders, rapes, deaths, and economic horror stories over soft dinner last night. Out of the misery and doom leapt an article with the lead, "The bar-tailed godwit, a plump shorebird with a recurved bill, has blown the record for nonstop, muscle-powered flight right out of the sky."

I was hooked.

Here’s the scoop. Scientists implanted transmitters in 23 birds and tracked their annual migration from Alaska to New Zealand. The godwits flew 7,242-miles in five to nine days nonstop. They could rest and refuel by taking a longer route with land stops but that option is risky and inefficient. What power of nature guides these creatures to make the choices they do?

Check it out here.

I’ve been searching for new role models lately—models of fortitude, goal-directed action, stamina, perseverance, self-abnegation, transcendence.

Thank you, bar-tailed godwits. I love you guys.

Off the Clock

The last time I had nothing on my schedule for more than a few days was seven years ago, just before 9/11. I rented a sunny cottage efficiency in Truro, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod. For one week, my biggest decisions were whether to hit the ocean or the bay, where to eat lobster roll, and which sunset whale watch to take out of Provincetown. I had my beach pass, my umbrella, my sunscreen, and my pile of books. For one week, I lived in heaven—no plans, no lists, no responsibilities.

I’ve had one of those weeks for the last ten days. But recovering from surgery was hardly the vacation I’d hoped for. Rather than being driven by outward, hedonistic urges, I've been driven by pain avoidance, pain management, pain relief, and sleep desperation. I’d heard the horror stories and I'd planned for it. But you can never plan carefully enough. In my delusional optimism, I’d actually hoped to accomplish some things, like purging the 8,497 emails from one of my inboxes. Or stuffing a bag with clothes for Goodwill. That was for starters.

Then I figured I’d graduate to reading—just light fare such as Lean Mean Thirteen by Janet Evanovich, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith, and Assassination Vacation by Sarah Vowell. And maybe, as I progressed, I’d hit my Guide to Literary Agents—I seriously have to get back to my book proposal.

But none of that was meant to be. I was reduced to the most basic, primitive needs. Liquids—cold or lukewarm? Nutrients—how soft can they be? Salty or sweet? Some semblance of rest—sitting up or leaning? The world revolved around me and my miserable biorhythms. Nothing else mattered. Except CNN.

By Monday, I finally lowered my expectations. I stuck a Post-it on my computer: “I give myself permission to be a zombie!”

No matter what, though, I was determined to make it to my Wednesday-night writing class, essay assignment in hand, having reviewed everyone else’s entries too. I read some submissions at 3 a.m., some at noon. It didn’t matter when. I was off the clock.

I hesitantly ventured into some non-chewy food options such as buttercup squash, Le Sueur baby peas (one by one), and coconut milk-vanilla soy yogurt, thanks to Susan's creative shopping excursions. Plus I found out Ardis the librarian, who’d had her tonsils out, was right: Jell-O is the ultimate godsend. Thank you, Kraft Foods. I won’t forget you when my ship comes in.

On Tuesday, I hit bottom. Agony. Swelling. Cumulative pain and insomnia. Nothing worked. Couldn’t reach the doctor. As I furiously stirred the strawberry Jell-O at dawn, scraping the metal spoon along the ceramic bowl, I thought I heard it crying “Help me! Help me!” Please someone, cart me away.

By Wednesday, after a medication change and a soothing round of ice chips, I actually left the house as a test run before my evening class—the world was different! Leaves were changing. Some trees were already bare. Gas was $2.79 a gallon, down from $3.39 when I went under the knife on October 7. I got to my class—and even read my essay aloud, very quietly, and lasted, intact, for three hours. Writing workshops are the best therapy. Then I came home and stared at the debate, half-listening, and collapsed. I slept for a total of five hours straight. My vacation had begun!

I stuck a Post-it on my microwave: “Smile! You are healing!” Uh huh.

In the next days, I read the Globe, the New York Times online, drank in the election coverage, cheered the Red Sox, very quietly, watched Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy! and rallied the brain cells to finish the Sunday crosswords. I stopped counting the hours between pills. I stopped clutching the banister when I went downstairs for my mail. Little signs.

On Thursday morning, I had a craving for fish. Now. Any nice hunk of meaty yummy juicy fish. Schrod. Salmon. Halibut. I didn’t care. I conjured fish purée, fish soup, mashed fish, bottled fish. But I couldn’t figure out how to get fish in non-chewable form. I was still thinking about it that afternoon when the words “gefilte fish” popped off the page of one of my classmates’ essays. Something about a Passover seder. In a daze, I got my body into some sweats and off to Shaw’s to comb the kosher aisle. It took all of my waning willpower not to open the jar of Kedem’s Original Heimeshe Gourmet Gefilte Fish in the car on the way home. It was worth the wait.

So vacation’s almost over. My throat feels like it’s been raked by coarse-grain sandpaper but at least the obstructions are gone. My sleep cycle is shredded. After my post-op doc's visit on Monday, it’s back to work, which means finding my appointment book somewhere in the piles. Eventually, I’ll collect my receipts and return some of my stash of uneaten baby food and weirdo health drinks. Then maybe I’ll save my pennies for a real vacation, someday soon, when I can recover from my recovery.

Op Art

Ten Good Things About Surgery

1. Everyone was on time, and everyone was kind.

2. Warm pre-op blankets. As many as I needed.

3. Reiki treatments before and after.

4. Singing along with Spring Awakening ("I Believe") as they wheeled me into the O.R.

5. The nurses laughed out loud with me, to relieve stress.

6. Lynn, the O.R. nurse, held my hand and read five times, as requested, "You are calm and relaxed. The surgery will go perfectly and you will heal beautifully."

7. So did the surgeon. And he sounded like he meant it.

8. "Next thing I knew" worked, as everyone promised. I don’t remember a thing.

9. I have nothing scheduled for ten days.

10. YouTube 24/7.

Ten Bad Things About Surgery

1. YouTube 24/7.

2. I feel like a zombie.

3. The pain gets worse after the anesthesia wears off, as everyone promised.

4. I spent $30 on a painkiller that wired me into oblivion. It’s nonrefundable.

5. The weather is perfect and I could care less.

6. The post-op nurse’s phone-side manner is . . . lacking.

7. Sophia and Sascha are picking up my zombie vibes.

8. Baby food tastes disgusting. Except for the carrots.

9. I can’t really brush my teeth because of the bleeding risk.

10. I can’t sleep.

So was it worth it? I'll let you know next week, if I'm still awake.

What’s in My Refrigerator

1 half-gallon Apple & Eve apple juice
1 half-gallon Apple & Eve white grape juice
8 quarts Gatorade fruit punch
1 quart Bolthouse Farms strawberry-banana fruit smoothie
1 quart Bolthouse Farms carrot apple passion fruit
1 quart grape Juicy Juice
1 pint Naked green medicine superfood juice smoothie
1 pint Naked bare breeze watermelon chill
1 pint 365-brand nutrient-enhanced Tropical Punch Power
1 pint 365-brand nutrient-enhanced Raspberry Renew
1 six-pack chocolate Boost Ensure
1 quart chocolate Silk Soymilk

3 half-gallon bottles 365-brand electrolyte-enhanced water
2 pints coconut O-water infused with electrolytes

1 quart Soy Dream vanilla-fudge swirl
1 pint Purely Decadent dairy-free so very strawberry frozen dessert
2 twelve-pack Jello-O chocolate-vanilla pudding pops
3 So Delicious dairy-free creamy raspberry pops
3 Wise Acre Frostea Honey Love mini-pops
1 Wise Acre Frostbite Cool Your Jets mini-pop
6 cups Lindy’s strawberry-watermelon Italian ice

2 four-packs Zen Soy banana pudding
1 four-pack Zen Soy chocolate-vanilla pudding

7 eight-ounce cups of Whole Soy & Co. peach yogurt

1 jar Earth’s Best organic rice and lentil dinner baby food
1 jar Earth’s Best organic summer vegetable dinner baby food
1 jar Earth’s Best organic vegetable turkey dinner baby food
1 two-pack Gerber’s green beans baby food
1 two-pack Gerber’s peas baby food
1 two-pack Gerber’s carrots baby food
1 two-pack Gerber’s sweet potatoes baby food
1 two-pack Gerber’s squash baby food
1 two-pack Gerber’s banana baby food

1 six-pack Shaw’s unsweetened natural applesauce
1 six-pack Mott’s pear applesauce
1 six-pack Mott’s mango and peach applesauce
1 six-pack Mott’s strawberry-banana applesauce

1 can Wolfgang Puck’s organic creamy butternut squash soup

6 eggs

1 eight-pack Nature's Path organic instant optimum-power hot oatmeal

1 bag ice chips

I’m getting my tonsils out on Tuesday. I think I’m ready.

Call Me Idealistic, But I Have a Dream

I’m a little hung over from the pre-debate-debate-post-debate binge. And afterwards, I lay awake thinking of "if only" zingers Obama could’ve used. Me and half the country, I’m sure.

But whatever political points both candidates scored last night, whatever differences they were able to articulate, the most obvious difference in this presidential campaign remains unspoken. Skin color. Only a few pollsters and columnists are even mentioning it. So I have a dream.

Barack, you know how you did the red-blue-purple thing in 2004? About how we’re all the same America, united and all that? It’s time for the race talk in 2008. I’d like to see you hit us with some good-ol’ consciousness raising. Aim it at white guilt. Aim it at Christian guilt. Aim it at Jewish guilt. Aim it at those who should "know better" but are holding back out of ancient, latent fear. We have to be carefully taught. And now is a teachable moment.

I grew up in an all-white suburb and believed blacks, Negroes, as we called them in the early 1960s, were people who lived in Harlem or Africa. Occasionally, I heard the term schwartze at home and learned to lock the car doors and turn my rings palm-side-down when driving above 96th Street in New York City. I remember visiting my grandparents in Florida and seeing "colored" and "white" drinking fountains.

I remember MLK and the civil rights movement and the Black Panthers and Malcolm X, and I believed in equality. But until I became a social worker, I didn’t really have to dig into my own racism and learned prejudice. I remember in my first year of graduate school, we studied "differences." With clients of a different race, ethnicity, class, sexual orientation, or ability, we were taught to name that difference, bring it into the session, and work with it. Barriers existed, but barriers could be overcome, or at least acknowledged. Naming it is the first step to connection and mutual understanding.

So, Barack Hussein Obama, I’d like to see you look right into that camera and name it:

"Look, folks. I get it. I get that many of you, when you look at me, see only the color of my skin and that scares you somehow. You see someone who looks different from you and you say, ‘I can’t vote for him. I may agree with his policies and ideals. I may disagree with the Bush administration and the Iraq war and the mismanagement of our economy, but I simply can’t imagine pulling a lever for a black man. For president?’

"I also get that, for many of you, nothing I say or anyone else says in the next few weeks will change your mind. I get that you believe a black man simply shouldn’t be in the White House, the White House, because of his skin color. So be it. I concede your vote.

"But I know there are many more of you out there who are still struggling to decide. You’re smart, thoughtful Americans who care about our country. I get that you’re still worried about my first name, my middle name, and my last name, and the name it rhymes with. You’re still worried about my religious background, about whether I agree with Reverend Jeremiah Wright, whether I’m elitist or out of touch, and whether I love my country. You know as well as I do there’s a lot of name calling going on, rumors tossed about by some stubborn folks who have some outdated ideas and hateful tactics. You know better. You’re too smart to fall for that ‘sticks-and-stones’ playground silliness.

"This is not the old America, the segregated America. You’ve seen a lot of change. I know. Change is hard. I feel your growing pains. But, deep down, in your heart of hearts, I know you believe in freedom and equal rights for all Americans. You are fair-minded, patriotic, God-loving people. You can spot injustice and cheer the underdog. Were you raised to believe that people who look different from you and your family are less than equal? Probably. Maybe even, without knowing it, you began to believe it was true. That’s the nature of racism. I get it. That’s part of all our history. But you’re smarter than that now, in 2008. You can see past the biases you had no choice but to inherit—you can think freely now. America needs change. We agree on that.

"So, I ask you to think, really think. I believe you’re smarter than those narrow-minded, old-fashioned people who would judge a man simply by the color of his skin, rather than the ‘content of his character.’ You know the speech. You know the truth. You know it’s time for change we can believe in. Yes, I'm black. We're different. But you’re smart and fair and thoughtful. And, if you have the courage to stop and look inside, I believe you know the answer. Together we can change history and change America."

Me and My Momentum

I’m having my tonsils out in a couple of weeks. "At your age?!" everyone asks. Yes, at my age. They’ve always been impressively large but of late, one of them has morphed into the Matterhorn. I can’t swallow, breathe, sleep, sing, eat, or drink comfortably. It took ten months and three ENTs before someone finally said not only are my tonsils the reason for my woes but they’ve got to go.

To prepare, I’m consuming the holistic literature on mind-body approaches to surgery, including positive affirmations, relaxation, meditation, and guided imagery. I'm identifying my inner sanctuaries and selecting a mellow playlist for the procedure.

I’m also cleaning house. Yesterday, I decided, in the spirit of Rosh Hashonah and renewal and all that clean-slate stuff, plus wanting a pleasant recovery environment, I'd get started.

The last time I vacuumed, I hate to say how long ago, instead of sucking up the dirt, the machine started spewing it from the roller brush and from some unidentified hole in the back. It glided smoothly enough when I pushed it, but on the return trip a spray of debris shot out.

Power: Off. Diagnosis: Trouble.

It was only the third time I’d used the thing. I’m not a big vacuumer, despite having two cats. I figure the dust mites and other little microbes that are growing in my rugs have the right to life, as long as I can’t see them. And I just hate the noise, not to mention the trauma inflicted on Sophia and Sascha, who cower under the bed, wide-eyed and trembling, until I give them the all-clear.

My vacuum is a Bissell Power Trak Cyclonic Momentum Bagless. Sounds so promising. It’s one of those inside-out-type models with a transparent Extra Large Capacity Dirt Cup in the front and a twisty series of external hoses secured with plastic brackets in the back. It boasts "Continuous Suction for Constant Cleaning." But it wasn't sucking at all.

I emptied the Dirt Cup, then flipped the Momentum on its side and spun the roller around, pulling a few hairs off the brushes. That should do it. But the more I pushed and pulled, the more it moaned and splashed filth in its wake.

I must’ve bought a lemon, I told myself. Well, maybe my mechanically minded neighbor will troubleshoot with me sometime. Or maybe I’ll have to return it. But not today. Back in the closet with you, Momentum. Let the mites live a little longer. I can’t deal.

That was the last time. So yesterday, when I tried again, same thing. As if it would have spontaneously healed in the closet without intervention? I dug out the manual and ended up talking to Stephanie, a Bissell tech support woman. I could barely understand her as she speed-read from her tech script, but as I lay Momentum down, I noticed for the first time a Filter Tray, which I removed. The sponge inside and the entire slot were chunked full of cat hair.

"Stephanie? I think I see what the problem is." She didn’t hear me and kept reading.

"Stephanie?" I told her of my discovery. She advised rinsing out the filter and, before we hung up, twittered something about cleaning out any stopped-up hoses with a broomstick.

The filter rinsed, I plugged Momentum in once again. It's better! Oops. Wishful thinking. The spewing resumed halfway through the living room rug.

Down you go. I unwound one big, ridged plastic hose and stretched it out on the floor. Empty. I wiped the dust off a second filter with a damp paper towel, then shoved my hand in the "Continuous Suction" orifice and pulled out more hair globs. By now I had filled a Shaw’s shopping bag about three inches high with thick gray gunky feline residue.

Ready? Let’s roll! Nope. Another Sahara sandstorm.

OK. Now I’m seriously committed to solving this myself, mechanically minded neighbor be damned. I flipped the thing over and closely examined the back, wondering why I hadn’t done this months ago. Besides the big, obvious ridged hose, I found solid hoses, soft hoses, nifty links, and U-joints, like under the bathroom sink, a mini-maze of interconnected piping, all removable. Snap, release. Cat hair. Twist, unwind. Cat hair. Two tubes were 100 percent blocked with, yes, more cat hair. I tried Stephanie’s broomstick technique, which worked perfectly. The Shaw’s bag was now overflowing with an enormous gray furball the equivalent of six cats.

At last, I stood up my Momentum—and it worked. Instead of coughing and sputtering, it roared a clear Cyclonic roar as it slid easily back and forth, inhaling the original plus the regurgitated dregs right into its Extra Large Capacity Dirt Cup. Sweep, suck, slurp, swallow. Done.

I plopped on the bedroom floor, peeked under the bed, and purred, "It’s OK, girls. You can come out now. No more noise. You’re safe." They blinked appreciatively.

I felt cleansed. And declogged. And I couldn’t help thinking about my tonsils. It’s time. I’m ready. And, after the recovery, which is supposed to be hell (quick! replace that thought with a positive "My recovery will be quick and easy!"), I'll be free! No more Matterhorn. No more adjusting my jaw or rearranging my tongue. No more snoring. Pretty soon I’ll be singing again, open and clear and unobstructed. Yeah, it took a while to diagnose the problem, but with my brand-new Power Trak Cyclonic Momentum Tonsil-less Throat, soon I’ll be good to go.

Rewind

Jon Stewart was on hiatus this week, so I missed my 11:00 sanity fix. Instead, I entered the surreal world of 9/11 on Thursday night. Do you remember, really remember, that morning seven years ago? I thought I would never forget, that the images and sequence of events were forever imprinted. But I was wrong.

I was flipping channels, looking for light fare, when I stumbled upon MSNBC’s "9/11: As It Happened." It was simply a rebroadcast, with some editing, of NBC’s original coverage from the morning of September 11, 2001, as it unfolded, with Katie Couric and Matt Lauer in New York. At first I tried to resist—no, no, watching the footage and seeing the towers would be too upsetting. I'd seen the tributes earlier in the day. I know what happened. But after two minutes, I was frozen. Just as frozen as I had been when it was live. What’s going on? What will happen next?

As the first tower burned, they speculated about a small errant plane that might have caused the explosion and fire. Remember? They alluded, not casually, but not alarmingly, to the 1993 WTC bombing. It was so strange, the sight of the billowing smoke from that initial blast. Then a reporter on her cell from a nearby neighborhood saw the second plane crash—not a small plane but a jumbo jet, live, as it happened. Could the air traffic control system have failed? Why would a pilot fly into a building? No, this is no accident. Terrorist attack. A declaration of war? The report of a hijacking. Tom Brokaw joined Matt and Katie in the studio, and Jim Miklashevski was on the phone, safely harbored in the Pentagon, until the Pentagon itself shook from another unknown blast. What’s going on? What will happen next?

This compulsion, this exercise of watching the rebroadcast, was almost like rereading a tragic novel, one I’d read repeatedly, knowing the outcome but forgetting the details. Wishing, hoping that if I read it with fresh eyes, it might yet have a happy ending. As the emerging facts were recounted, Katie added, "And, of course, who knows the human toll?" Remember? They guessed 50,000 people could've been inside but hoped most had been evacuated safely. I remember seeing that live, hearing the estimates. It was a third plane that hit the Pentagon, they announced, not a bomb on the heliport.

Some of the story is locked in my memory. Yet now I struggled again to string it all together. Which flight came from where? It was two from Boston, right? Was it the north tower that was struck first but fell second? Or vice versa?

By now, it was long after midnight and I had to sleep. I hit the VCR and watched the rest on Friday. How could the coordination have been so perfect? Were more planes being transformed into missiles? Air traffic across the country had been grounded and transatlantic flights diverted to Canada. I’d forgotten that. The first tower fell. The second tower fell. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania: United Flight 93.

While smoky footage rolled from Lower Manhattan where the towers had been vaporized, Tom Brokaw said, in his twangy, comforting way, putting the pieces together, slowly and confidently: "It is hard to overstate the consequence of all this, and this is just the beginning. We’ll be living with this story and dealing with the consequences for some time. It will cost us in loss of life and cost us in terms of the psychological security that we have in this country. America has been changed by all this."

What was it the beginning of? Had we not felt vulnerable before? I don't remember. And who would have imagined Iraq and more needless reckless loss of life and Bush 2004 and the sickening spectre of McCain-Palin? Are we back to sleep? What’s going on? What will happen next?

I hit the button to rewind and the video played backwards, the story reversing. Transfixed, I watched the smoke billowing in, not out. The towers uncollapsing, one by one. The scene of a single fire in a single building. We interrupt this broadcast. And back to the beginning. A sunny September morning when the sky was safe and azure.

I switched off the TV, took a deep breath, and went about my day. Unlike the 9/11 families, I have the luxury of putting the story away, until I need to remember again how it began and ponder how it will end.

Jon Stewart, Will You Be My Sponsor?

I don’t drink. No big reason, no rehab ghosts, no vows of temperance, just not a fan. I guess I don’t like feeling loopy, although I used to sip an occasional glass of wine or, in my college waitressing days, a ladylike apricot sour or tequila sunrise. Maybe it’s another one of those control things, I’m not sure.

Instead, I’m addicted to politics, and my life has become unmanageable. For the past ten days, it’s been CNN and MSNBC and NYT, slate.com and the huffington post, and even Fox News for a peek behind enemy lines. It started with The Royal Clintons, Michelle’s sassy glam and Barack and Biden’s gleaming smiles, mile-high fireworks, tears and historic exhilaration, red-white-and-blue hope. Then came Sarah Barracuda and the Beehive, Bristolgate and moose, Gustav and vetting and sex-lies-and-videotape. Hype and hyperbole and hypocrisy. I feel sick.

Finally, during McCain’s Thursday speech, I nearly blacked out from the excess brain activity involved in debunking falsehoods and resisting the powerful forces of Rovian manipulation. All of a sudden, I felt dreamy. Yes, bipartisanship, what a lovely thought. Let’s stop shouting. How nice. Strength and honor. What’s not to love? The surge? Sure, a tidy success. Oh my God, I’ve hit bottom. Take away the keys to the remote. I am not safe to watch.

OK, I realize I could turn off the TV or ignore the newspapers and blogs but I consider myself an informed person and, as the child of a news junkie, I am genetically programmed for current-events immersion. Growing up, it was multiple daily papers and the TV plus one, if not two, radios going all day and sometimes into the night. That would be Dad. A relentless media barrage, sometimes in different languages. I respect my father’s curiosity and knowledge and multitasking, but now I’m hooked too.

I wake up in the morning and even if I have a channel-changing hangover, I need to know what’s going on in the world. Drag me to the Situation Room. Give me a Keith Olbermann rant with a Campbell Brown chaser. Not good enough. Larry King, hit me up. Anderson Cooper, spin me around on the 360. I really should stop. But I’ve tried. I can’t. I am powerless over my disease.

That’s where Jon Stewart comes in. Nauseous and vibrating by 11:00 at night, I need detox. The Daily Show detox. My 30 minutes of cold, hard truth—the fake news. Tell me really what’s going on in the world, not what they want me to think is going on. Give me a dose of those video clips. Like last night, I came to during a jaw-dropping juxtaposition of the Bush 2000 and McCain 2008 acceptance speeches. Or earlier in the week, I sobered up watching Karl and Bill O’s double-talking rhetoric. Better than any slap on the face or jolt of espresso. Jon Stewart, you restore me to sanity! Will you be my sponsor? I’m ready to quit real news, I promise.

On second thought, cold turkey sounds tough. The withdrawal could be painful. What about cutting back? No, not before the debates. Oh, I know! I’ll find a substitute, something to take the edge off, just temporarily. That’s fair, isn’t it? Yes. First thing tomorrow, I will get down on bended knee and pray: Dear God, please guide the Red Sox to the playoffs. Bring me Soxtober. If you do, I swear I’ll kick politics for good, on November 5.

Berger, Beethoven, and Bliss

A sizzling drum roll, a bass guitar groove, and that distinctive trumpet riff. With those pulsing measures that open “Aquarius,” I knew I was in for much more than a fun ’60s flashback. Hair. Outdoors. In Central Park. The 40th-anniversary revival production last Friday night was harmony and understanding, mystic crystal revelation, and way beyond the mind’s true liberation. And that was just the overture to a magical weekend whose coda belonged to Ludwig van Beethoven, on a mountain road high in the Berkshires.

New York City on a late-August evening could’ve been impossibly humid or stormy, given this summer’s violent weather. But we were lucky. It was heavenly. My friend Susan had bought tickets months ago (they miraculously survived her apartment fire) and we sat fifth-row center in the Delacorte amphitheater. We weren't exactly going get in line at 3 a.m. to nab free tickets. Not from Boston.

Truth be told, half the reason for securing advance seats was to see Jonathan Groff, of Spring Awakening, as Claude, the guy who gets drafted. I realize it’s embarrassingly unseemly for a 50-something woman and her 30-something friend to drive 200+ miles to drool over a 20-something actor, but Jonathan is, well, special. His face, his body, his voice, his intensity. He could make any reasonably sane (but deeply feeling) woman (or man, in his case) keel over in reverence. Because of a prior commitment, though, Groff would be gone before the end of the run. Oh no. But an actor named Christopher Hanke, blond and shiny and effervescent, stood in and he done good. Mad good, as my teenage clients say.

I’m not a bona fide Hair groupie like Susan, who’s been obsessed with the show since childhood. She played Sheila, the female lead, in an area production last fall and knows the score and the script (such as it is) inside out. I sang a cheesy choral arrangement of “Aquarius” for Munich High School’s graduation ceremonies in 1969. But Hair is my era, my youth. The minute those opening chords sailed out from the onstage bandstand, I was gone. As in transported. It was perfect staging, electric dancing, authentic costumes, breezy air, naked bodies, peace and love and the psychedelic energy of a cloudless summer night.

And then Will Swenson, the hunky actor playing the Tribe’s leader, Berger, danced with Susan. The cast was cavorting throughout the theater during the title song. Will undoubtedly had spotted Susan on the aisle in her peace earrings and Bohemian dress, moving as much as one can without making a spectacle but restraining herself, I imagine, from simply jumping onto the grassy proscenium to merge with the Tribe.

Will swiftly navigated a few rows and barriers and, in a blurry flash of denim and beads and bare-chested sweat, extended his hands to Susan, who instantly rose to mirror his figure-eight head-flailing tangle of hair in an ecstatic swirl of rock and roll and pure luv. I was breathless. The people next to me whooped. After he bounded back onto the stage, Will reached out his hands, wiggled his fingers toward Susan, and raised his eyebrows, once. Stunned yet calm, Susan gave him a quick, gracious thumbs-up, and fell back in her seat.

For the finale, catharsis not yet complete, the audience was invited on stage for “Let the Sunshine In.” As many as could fit, anyway. It’s been decades since I was at a Be-In or any kind of -In. Propelled by my neighbors, Susan long since disappeared into the mass, I began jumping, twirling, screaming, singing, waving my arms above my head, not even breathing or thinking, just being, along with dozens of euphoric strangers and the wonderful, hairy cast. And lightning didn’t strike. And, for that moment, all was well with the world.

By the next night, we’d visited with my dynamo cousin Bobby, cruised the Upper West Side, sampled organic smoked salmon at Zabar’s, watched my brother, Don, play piano for a silent film at MOMA, caught ten minutes of the tantalizing Dali exhibit, had a yummy Italian dinner in a too-noisy restaurant with my parents in White Plains, and headed to the hills of northwestern Connecticut to Don’s home.

Sunday afternoon, Don, Susan, and I went to Falls Village, where we climbed down a steep hill to a swimming hole. Across a medium-size pond studded with rocks, the powerful waterfalls beckoned. I try not to think of myself as phobic about too many things. But swimming across the pond without being able to touch the bottom is one of them. Maybe it’s a control thing. Maybe it’s the fact that I never learned to swim well. So I chose to scuttle slowly along the algae-covered rocks and watch daredevil children jump off the cliffs, while Don and Susan swam against the current to frolic under the falls.

After a while, I was relieved to climb carefully up the hill to the car, where we headed off for a real lake, where I could do my kind of swimming. Sidestroke, parallel with the shore. Kind of like those old ladies in the ocean with their pink-floral rubber bathing caps and flabby arms. But I didn’t care. I’ll be an old lady if it means being able to touch the bottom.

Don started the engine. It was 4:00, Sunday, August 24. On the car radio, we heard four words, Alle Menschen werden Brüder, enough for instant ecstasy: Beethoven’s Ninth, live from Tanglewood! “All men will become brothers.” Susan and I have sung it countless times, including with Tanglewood at the United Nations for the 1998 Winter Olympics Opening Ceremonies. Bumping along the rocky dirt road up Mt. Riga toward the lake, past verdant hills and meadows flocked with horses, then deep into the shadowy woods, we cranked the volume and sang, Susan on soprano, me on alto, Donnie improvising impeccably as always, shushing ourselves to hear how the chorus pulled off the scary parts, melting at their perfectly executed crescendos and pianissimos, swooning and swaying and flinging our arms and legs and heads, now to Beethoven not Hair, but it’s all the same, isn’t it? Joy, peace, love, brotherhood, sisterhood, music, dancing, bodies in motion, bliss and gratitude. Let the sunshine in. Mad amazing.

And when we arrived at the lake, the water was cool and placid and inviting. I strode in and dunked and dog-paddled and sidestroked, knowing I could stand on the soft, sandy bottom whenever I needed to.

Conventional Wisdom, 1968

It’s Convention time with a capital C, so in honor of the ever-changing, never-changing world of presidential elections, I'm posting excerpts from my memoir-in-progress, Where Is Luv? A Teenager’s Diary of Hope, Passion, and Total Confusion.

August 1968: On the political front, LBJ had dropped out of the race and RFK was gone. McCarthy was challenging Humphrey, and no one wanted Nixon to be president. No one I knew anyway.

On the personal front, my family was on Home Leave for two months, staying with relatives in Connecticut, plus a short visit to Miami to see the grandparents. All family all the time—quel challenge for a 14-year-old continental sophisticate. Or so I fancied myself.

Americans overseas, military or not (we were not), called extended visits to the States "Home Leave." But, after living in Germany for two years, the States was like a foreign country to me. Home was Munich. I’d left Rye, New York, far behind in 1966, and was deeply enmeshed in my life abroad and the politics of adolescence.

August 4, New Haven

Today I got all made up. I looked really good. I could be a model maybe! Mom said so. Cool! I think I'm not that ugly.

Can’t wait for Munich—28 days. Ugh! 4 whole wks. Convention starts tomorrow. Hope it’s Rocky vs. HHH [Nelson Rockefeller vs. Hubert Humphrey] or Rocky vs. LBJ. I doubt LBJ will run. 2 mos. ago Bobby Kennedy was shot. Still can’t believe it. I'm gonna plan my schedule for ninth grade real rigidly and get my homework done and study hard and keep up in Social Studies! I have potential!

August 12, Miami

Watched Convention. Tricky Dicky Nixon won and chose Spiro Agnew (whatta name!) for running mate. Rocky put up a good fite.

August 16, New Haven

Grüss Gott! [Hi!] Back in Connecticut after hectic week in Miami, visiting family and swimming and playing gin rummy, shuffleboard, and going out to dinner and having a gay-all time.

Latest rage! Earrings! Got a whole bunch of pierced-look earrings. I have been wearing them all the time. Mom is considering letting me get my ears pierced.

Latest rage! 35 $$$ to spend any way I please! I would like to buy a fall [faux hair] with it. That’s my latest wild wish. Since London I’ve sort of wanted one.

Latest rage! Spex! I got new pair spex. Also prescrip. sunspex. They really look great and do wonders for my face!! Soften, unangulate!

So now we’re back to nagging and arguments—better than nagging from the grandparents! But I love them dearly. They’re so peppy and alive. Some people their age resign themselves to a secluded life cuz they think they’re not much left for the world.

Saw 2001: A Space Odyssey. Really weird, interesting, wild movie. I’m gonna read the book and find out what it was really all about. I remember when I was at the movies at Family Theater [a Munich hangout] 2 mos. ago today (last time I saw everyone!!) and tried to foretell what real Americans were like. Well, I’ll tell ya! Real Americans are just as cheap as Munich Americans. Curlers, gum, fakey everything, airs, Cadillacs. I don’t really "dig it," as Donnie says. Higher-class "America" appeals to me. Late nites, evening gowns, sophisticated company. I hope I don’t submit to the cheap America later on.

For the plane trip, bought Intimate, a trashy magazine. Interesting to read, tho, and see how some girls (although imaginary) succumb to flattery and sweet talk to be conned into making love with a man. I hope I never make that mistake and then regret it as those girls did.

August 26

Went to Caldor's and got gobs of stuff. Breckset, Pssssst, school stuff, etc. Today, Karen and I went downtown. She got $17 Weejun loafers. I got a free Bonne Bell makeover. It was fun. But we put too much on! Bought $4 worth of the stuff and got free lip gloss. Bought orange and yellow accessories for my room. I wanna redecorate my room when I get back (5 days!!) w/ less clutter and more femininity.

August 30

Well, as Daddy says, it’s down to the wire! We’ll be in the air in 24 hours. Went to Hartsdale, went shopping, bought 2 mobiles and a poster at Giftique. Came back and saw Humphrey get the nomination. He chose Muskie as a running mate. Yeccch, what a choice, HHH or Nixon!!

I’m really nervous about going. I think I’ll really miss it more than if I hadn’t come at all. Visited old house [in Rye]. Nostalgic. TOODLES FROM THE STATES—Land of TV, hamburgers, nice houses, no fences, Alexander’s, violence!! Most everything! Oh well, not of friends.

September 2, Munich

Hello from land of beer, fat, hairy legs, ugly houses and our beautiful house!! The whole house is redone! It’s great! New möbel [furniture] in the living room. Brand new küche [kitchen]. Fantastic!! Rug in hall. Paint all over! My room is really tuff! Painted lite blue. With new stuff that I got it’ll be great! Have already started rearranging.

Left USA on Saturday—sad goodbyes. Then Ma, Pa and I zoomed off to JFK via the dentist (ayayay!). Good 6½-hour flite to London. Slept most of the way. Then 1½-hr. to Munich. Good to be back!

September 5

All I’ve been doing is fixing my room and clothes and the house. It’s taking shape now. Talked with Kathy for 40 minutes last night. I was afraid to tell her that I kind of wanna break away from her and the new kids and not always group together. So she agreed! I solved both our problems! We decided that we both want a new image. Both of us want good grades and popularity, so we figured we'd get good grades and be studious and then people will come to you if you’re generally nice to them w/out plugging for popularity. See? It’s hard to write. But on the first day we’re not gonna pair off and talk and gossip (no, no, no!!) but be more alone. I hope it works out.

I’m gonna really try to work this year. It’s very important to get honors to get into any ½ decent college and get a ½ decent education. So BUCKLE DOWN! In 10 days, school starts. My new "image" should be complete by then. It’ll be hard but I'm trying.

Stay tuned next week: Notes from HAIR in Central Park, August 22, 2008. Long live the '60s!

Olymp-o-Mania

I remember it happened four years ago, too. And eight years ago. And 12, 20, even 36 years ago, when Mark Spitz was the hot, supple-limbed poster boy in Munich. The pageantry and pomp, rabid nationalism, heart-wrenching backstories, and interminable commercials. And I remember each time spending long hours in front of the TV trying to imagine the life of an elite athlete—what it must be like to have a singular, all-or-nothing, must-win goal, where success or failure hinges on hundredths of a second or tenths of a point. Where the turn of an ankle or a surge of nerves could obliterate years, years, of coaching, preparing, fine-tuning, sweating, dreaming.

Olympic fever—utterly irresistible. I was gonna skip it this time. Really. I would not be seduced by NBC. Too much hype, it’s on too late, too much to do. I just can’t commit.

I casually, noncommittally caught the end of the Opening Ceremonies. Damn. They got me. So here are some of my Olympic reflections after Week 1:

Michael Phelps

Of course! How else could I begin? Gold medal #7 by 1/100 of a second! I can’t wait for the relay tonight. He’s God and Hercules and Paul McCartney all rolled into one. Along with the hungry media and international fan clubs, I’ve devoured the micro details about his training regimen, the 12,000-calorie-a-day “diet,” and the vital (and I mean vital) statistics about his body and his strange tunnel-vision life. Did you know he was arrested for driving under the influence in 2004, after Athens? God is flawed. But at least God partied.

Phelps is a miracle. Or a freak. Or something meta-human. But when you think about it, which I’ve been doing for a week, what kind of a life is eat, swim, rest? I’d much rather eat, pray, love. I do hope he plays when he gets back to the States. After cashing in on the endorsements, of course.

Anyway, it’s that arm-span thing that knocks me out. The wing-flapping before each swim. Six feet seven inches of sublime condor. I had to try, didn’t you? I yanked myself up out of my chair, all five feet of me. Lengthening my spine and leaning forward, fully bent over, I extended both arms and pressed them backwards. I flapped, slowly and gently, then a little faster. Ouch! You can’t be serious. I read he was double-jointed in the elbows, knees, and ankles. Is it possible to have double-jointed shoulders too? Note to self: Schedule chiropractor appointment.

So it’s goodbye to swimming, to Ryan Lochte’s bedroom eyes and Aaron Peirsol’s satin chest and Dara Torres’s powerful arms. To the Water Cube and Rowdy Gaines, who used to be a hunk and now looks wizened. To buttery muscles and flipper feet and smashed world records and fantasies of flexibility. And to Michael Phelps, Man and Superman.

Men's Gymnastics

The biceps, the thighs, the symmetry, the chalk, the still rings, that Sascha kid on the pommel horse, the tattoos, the biceps. Enough said.

Women's (Or Should I Say Girls'?) Gymnastics

How old are the Chinese girls, really? Who selects them as three-year-olds and why? Is it their shape, their bone structure, their malleability? Are they psych-tested to assess their strengths and vulnerabilities? Even the Americans are like machines. I wonder what Nastia Liukin’s Rorschach would reveal: “I see a full-twisting double-flipping dismounting Romanian pixie about to nail a perfect stick”? Do these girls know about Monet and Brahms and chocolate-hazelnut gelato? I worry about their mental health.

Of all the routines, the balance beam is the most daunting—how do they do that? Let me try. I placed a ruler on the floor and measured out four inches. Can I walk an imaginary straight line that wide, one foot in front of the other? Imagine whirling and twirling and leaping and cartwheeling and somersaulting and somehow still landing on this tiny little surface.

I tried a back flip once in sixth grade and landed on my head. After that, I decided to be a writer.

Coming Up: Track and Field

One stretch of my usual walk is a mile-long circuit by the Charles River, past quacking ducks and annoying geese and eagle-eyed seagulls and herons fishing along the waterfall’s edge. One mile. It takes me around 20 minutes at a nice pace that gets my heart going and my brow sweating. This week, people will run fast enough to cover that entire distance in under four minutes. My God.

Or the 100-meter dash: Imagine the length of a football field plus a little more. Imagine coordinating every breath and every movement and every muscle and eye-blink and propelling your body through space in under ten seconds. OK, no one’s around. I’ll try to run as fast as I can. After ten seconds, I covered maybe 20 feet or 20 yards, or, I really don’t know. I’m not good at distances. I only know my knees were howling and my feet started to laugh.

I think I’ll stick to writing.

Earth Touch

In the absence of crises large and small, at least in my personal corner of the universe, I contemplate the vagaries of daily life.

The Paper Boy

That’s what we used to call them when I was growing up, anyway, but now I have no idea who the man is who wakes up in the middle of the night and drives around town tossing newspapers onto people’s stoops and porches. Usually, he hits the top step, but sometimes my Boston Globe lands in a puddle and soaks through, in which case I have to go through a lengthy phone tree to get a dry paper redelivered.

His name is Geraldo and he lives over near Logan Airport. I know this because about 10 times a year he sticks a self-addressed envelope in the plastic bag wishing me a happy mother’s day or a merry Christmas or peace in the Easter season, none of which applies to me. Every year, I mail him a Christmas check, but I pass on the other holidays.

This week, Geraldo enclosed another envelope, but this time with a typed-up plea:

Dear Custumer:

I want to say thank you for your help, because the gas are to expencive, and your tip are help me to be able to delivery your newspaper every day.

Thank you very much and have a great day.

Geraldo

I understand, Geraldo! I really do. I’m so grateful that you rise early and aim the paper, and I’d like to be able to tip you more frequently than at Christmas, but my heating oil bill just vaulted from $170 to $320 a month. I am seriously tapped.

However, Geraldo, I admire your style. Direct, heartfelt, proactive. Maybe you could run for office and figure out how to solve this whole energy mess? I’ll vote for you, I promise!

Tech Support

It wasn’t too much trouble after all to set up the RCN box so I could watch TV after the mandated digital conversion in my town. But I still couldn’t record a show. I called tech support. "Joe," who has a robust accent, offered to help. After giving all of my identifying information, we were on our way:

"Ma’am, please tell me, where are you sitting?"

"In front of the TV."

"Approximately how far away from the TV are you sitting, ma’am?"

I cannot gauge distances. Was it five feet, nine feet? Should I grab my ruler and measure? If I were lying down in this space, would I fit? "I have no idea," I said. "Maybe seven feet?"

"OK, ma’am. Now, I want you to move closer, approximately four feet, and aim the new RCN remote at the box." As distinct from my TV remote, VCR remote, and DVD remote.

I scootched forward on the floor. I was tired. I had trouble understanding him. But I needed him. "OK, what’s next?"

"Now, ma’am, I want you to press the Mute button and the OK button at the same time and hold them down for three seconds."

I obeyed.

"Do you see the seven upper buttons flashing in sequence?"

I did. He was reprogramming my TV from India.

"Now hold the CBL button down for two seconds and press OK twice."

Again, I followed his instructions. He took me through several more series of manual maneuvers, pressing different buttons simultaneously, then letting go.

"Joe, this is crazy. Don’t you think this is crazy?"

"Uh, no, ma’am, it is not crazy. Now just press once more the CBL button, then release."

Help! Joe! I haven’t had dinner yet. Finally, we were set. I tried to record, it didn’t work. So Joe wanted me to unhook and rehook a set of white, yellow, and red wires behind my TV. No. Not tonight, Joe. We’re done. I don’t care if I ever record another show. I'll even go without my Jeopardy! I’m hungry.

The next day, I spotted an RCN truck on my street and approached the balding, red-faced driver, who was writing on his clipboard in the front seat. In two minutes, he diagnosed the problem and told me what to do. I went home, pressed three buttons, it worked.

Alex Trebek, I’m back.

Men

John Edwards: What were you thinking? Please, Barack, please. No tabloid revelations.

Saturday Morning Yoga Class

Me before yoga: yakkety-yak, worry, worry, noise, yakkety, uh-oh, plan, plan, review, worry, anticipate, green light you idiot!, what if, oh no, worry, yakkety, noise.

Me after yoga: in and out steady breathing, expansion, calm, warm mellow, soft shoulders, inner smile, humming car, you can pass me that’s fine, all is well, peace, love, harmony.

Flights of Angels

Jody died on Tuesday morning. Word spread quickly through the Zamir Chorale community. Even though we were expecting the news, it still was a shock to read the email. The funeral would be on Wednesday afternoon.

Later that morning, I got an emergency call from a client’s mother—her 17-year-old son tried to overdose Monday night with a combination of heroin and Valium. He did it at home, which was a good decision, as much as an addict in the throes of relapse can make a good decision, because his parents found him before he lost consciousness and they called 911. I was strangely relieved that he was in the hospital—at least he’s safe. I don’t think he was trying to die. I think he was trying to escape his crippling anxiety. Addiction is such an impulsive disorder—please keep me from feeling pain. I need a way out.

Jody tried to live for as long as she could. She was 56. I was relieved for Jody and her family too—she was safe now, out of pain. It was not her choice to die but she died with dignity and strength, surrounded by love.

Through the rest of the day, I felt alternately hazy and irritable. Why doesn’t that idiot use his turn signal? What is wrong with that cashier? Hurry up! I felt impatient with my clients and short with my friend Susan, who asked for a second opinion on a fabulous apartment. It’s perfect and she took it. She’ll move in September, and although it’s not the same as her being able to go home after the fire, over time she will create a happy Susan space there. And maybe it will become home someday.

And so, the next day, Zamir gathered to say goodbye to Jody. We’re not just a chorus, we’re a community. Josh Jacobson, our director, called a rehearsal before the service so we could run through the two pieces Jody had requested: "Enosh," Louis Lewandowski’s setting of Psalm 103 ("Surely our days are numbered"), and "Adonai Ro’i," Gerald Cohen’s setting of Psalm 23 ("The Lord is my shepherd").

Josh took charge, as Josh does at these times, reminding us that, unlike in a concert, we would need to set aside our emotions while singing, to honor the music and to honor Jody. It was a familiar scene. Not so much the funeral of one of our own, although we mourned for Rick a couple of years back, but having to transcend our emotions to honor the dead. We’ve sung in the Lodz and Warsaw cemeteries, in the shadow of the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau, by the train tracks in Terezin, on the night of September 11, at the United Nations for Holocaust Remembrance Day. I looked around at my friends, my spiritual family, and felt safe and warm, happy and sad, grateful and empty.

I’ve only been to a few funerals in my life, so I don’t have much to go on, but it was beautiful. The singing, yes—standing closely packed, vibrating with the harmonies and overtones, Scott Sokol’s molasses baritone, and knowing Jody, wherever she was, was smiling. But it was much more than the singing.

The eulogies were heartfelt and literate. Her husband, her brother, and close friends spoke of Jody’s passions and accomplishments. They shared anecdotes about her, both funny and touching. I realized, as I gather people do at funerals, that I didn’t really know Jody that well. We were fellow sopranos for 15 years, but outside of Zamir, we didn’t socialize. I learned about her marriage to Mark, only eight years together, about his gentleness and devotion, and how their partnership transformed her. I learned that Jody’s strong and often opinionated nature stemmed in part from her commitment to justice and fairness rather than a compulsion to be right.

I also began thinking about my own death, as I gather people do at funerals. What would my legacy be? Will I have honored my values and taken risks like Jody? Will I have manifest my creativity and found love, even late in life? If I were faced with cancer, would I be so brave and so determined and so . . . evolved as Jody?

Suddenly I felt calm and energized, subtly electrified. It wasn’t a words thing, although if it were, the feelings would translate into clichés such as Carpe diem, Just do it, Life is not a dress rehearsal. Yes. Beginning now, I will live my passion, sing from my heart, and speak my truth even if someone disagrees. I will be feisty and unselfconscious. I will eat less, exercise more, worry less, play more, recycle weekly, and give back in some small way. I will maximize my day, my week, my life.

After the service, I went directly to the office for my 4:30 group of teenage boys, all of whom are in trouble with drugs, alcohol, and the law. Their passion, on the outside at least, is finding the latest and greatest ways to cheat on a drug test. They live in the moment and long to chase that next high. I wanted to shake them and scream, "Wake up! Don’t you realize life is short?" But I didn't.

[SPOILER ALERT!] At the end of Spring Awakening, the musical based on Frank Wedekind's 1891 play about adolescent yearning and self-discovery, young Melchior is in a cemetery, grieving, pondering suicide. Like my client, in that moment, he sees no way out. He opens a razor blade and lifts it to his throat. Then, the ghosts of his two lost friends, Moritz and Wendla, rise from their graves in an eerie white light. Moritz sings:

Those you’ve known and lost still walk behind you.
All alone, their song still seems to find you.
They call you, as if you knew their longing.
They whistle through the lonely wind, the long blue shadows falling. . . .

Melchior listens, weeps, and holds them close. Then he snaps the razor shut, resolved, and sings:

Now they’ll walk on my arm through the distant night,
And I won’t let them stray from my heart.
Through the wind, through the dark, through the winter light,
I will read all their dreams to the stars.
I’ll walk now with them.
I’ll call on their names.
I’ll see their thoughts are known.
Not gone. Not gone.
They walk with their heart.
I’ll never let them go.
You watch me, just watch me, I’m calling.
And one day all will know.

Goodbye, Jody. May you rest in peace and sing with the angels.

The More Things Change

Like clockwork, at 5:45 this morning, Sascha padded across my belly, peeping her little kitty peep, which sounds more like a cricket than a cat, nudged her fuzzy gray head insistently into the curl of my elbow, and demanded a massage. In the daytime, people time, she avoids me entirely—darting out of reach so I can't ambush her for a nail clipping, scanning my every movement with one green eye cocked as she drapes her lithe little kitty body across the catnapper in the living room window. Stay away, Kitty Mama, she orders.

Sascha wakes me up every morning. Right, I know: Why not close the bedroom door? It would make things easier, but I’d miss the connection and the sweet joy of knowing that, for those few moments, she trusts me. It’s a morning pleasure, a rhythm that pulses as a constant amid the inconstant rhythms of daily life.

In three days, my TV will stop working unless I install an RCN-mandated digital converter box. I like my TV the way it is. I like knowing all the channel numbers and being able to record Jeopardy! and watch the Red Sox simultaneously. On Tuesday, I will have to learn all new channels and figure out how to work a big, clunky remote with 59 (count 'em) buttons. And I won’t be able to watch a show while recording another unless I buy a DVR or pay $14.95 a month to rent one. I don't want a DVR. It’s not that I’m a technophobe. It's just that I want to watch TV the way I'm used to, with my own idiosyncratic viewing habits. Now I have no choice.

In the scheme of things, of course, it’s not important. I can roll with change, I can adjust to new and sometimes even welcome it. But sometimes, like now, I just want to stop the clock and say enough. Enough new. Enough change. Enough disruption and uncertainty.

When lightning struck my friend Susan’s apartment a few weeks ago, her world was disrupted in a random instant. No home. No furniture. Gone are the Broadway scores, textured throw pillows, and hundreds of CDs. No more Murano glass. No more stuffed animals. With the exception of Marshmallow, her very favorite teddy bear with a red satin ribbon around the neck, who, propped at the head of Susan’s bed, somehow survived, having witnessed the fire, the collapsed walls, the charred ceiling beams, the powerful spray of the fire hoses. Other things survived, even some clothes that are now arriving from the cleaners, washed of the smoky smell, souvenirs of a former life.

Susan has no constant. She’s in recovery and attempting new routines, all of which seem wrong and unfair and unwanted. Her time, as she says, is "emotional time," an awkward, surreal nightmare where nothing makes sense, and from which she can’t wake up. I did hear her soprano-laugh on the phone just now, though. It’s been a while.

Our friend Jody is near death, now out of the hospital and at a hospice, unaware of her surroundings. Visitors report she responds to singing, turning her head slightly. Maybe she’s singing along deep inside her time. Funeral preparations are underway as her husband and their families and the Zamir Chorale family wait, not knowing when we’ll gather to mourn and pray and sing for Jody the songs she requested when she was awake.

A bolt of lightning can strike and steal Susan’s home, and cancer can spread and steal the life of a woman my age, and nature, too, can render its ineluctable verdict on my aging parents, who are blessed with sound minds but ever-slowing bodies. Disruption. Inconstancy. Rhythms I can’t control.

And so I watch the Red Sox and Yankees and glory in the beauty that is Jonathan Papelbon’s delivery and boo at the beauty that is Mariano Rivera’s precision. I get breakfast and go to yoga and breathe and take a walk and admire the midsummer gardens in full, startling bloom. I pay $3.99 a gallon for gas (cheap!) and check YouTube for new Spring Awakening videos. I watch Sir Obama in Berlin and Mr. McCain at the Fudge Haus in Podunk, Ohio. I go again to the shore to gaze at the ocean’s steady pulse. And tonight, I’ll crawl into my own bed, with my own sheets and pillows, and gratefully sleep, waiting, hoping, to wake up to the pads of Sascha’s paws on my belly, precisely at 5:45.

Of Millinery and Moons

I wear different hats. I like it that way. Millinery aficionados would appreciate the collection: therapist, writer, editor, singer, friend, daughter, sister, and, my favorite of all, Kitty Mama. I will tell you about Kitty Mama, but not today. Today I’m looking back on a week of depths and contrasts, shifting tides and tears.

Monday through Wednesday, I wore my therapist hat. I imagine it’s a large, floppy, all-season chapeau, subdued but inviting, with just enough coverage to protect me from toxic overexposure. Most of my clients are in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction. They talk about their struggles with alcohol, marijuana, cocaine, benzodiazepines, hallucinogens, Oxycontin, heroin (and the rest of the wild, wacky world of opiates)—and that’s just the substances. The plot thickens.

This week, for instance, clients—men, women, young and old—discussed PTSD, suicide attempts, cutting (themselves), eating disorders, school failure, domestic violence, parental abuse, parental neglect, relapse (of course), acute anxiety, OCD, mortgage foreclosure, arrest, and incarceration. And don’t forget the greatest scourge ever to befall suburban adolescents: boredom (which doesn’t have an official diagnostic code, but, if it were reimbursable, I’d be wealthy by now).

When I’m wearing my therapist hat, I am focused and empathic. I listen hard, with curiosity and compassion. I understand how tough it is to change—behaviors, thoughts, lifelong strategies that keep us stagnant and afraid. And I get how tough it is to feel invisible—doesn’t anyone see the real me? Or to worry about screwing up—what will they think? The challenge and beauty of being a therapist is just being there. Witnessing. But also acknowledging the big picture: the universal search for meaning, purpose, love, and "happiness," whatever that is. Even my group of testosterone-laden scofflaw teenage boys talks about loneliness and longing and the pain of inertia.

Yup, changing habits is hard. Healing from trauma is painful—the only way out is through. Control is overrated. There’s no right answer. One step at a time. It doesn’t have to be all or nothing. Keep it in the moment. Don’t be too hard on yourself. Breathe. Laugh. Schedule play. Keep up the good work. See you next week. Being a therapist is exhausting and filling, draining and enlivening.

On Thursday, I donned a new hat. Well, not quite new, but one that’s been stuffed way back in the closet for about five years: proofreader. Clearly, the role cries out for one of those newspaperman visors from a ’40s film, don’t you think? That’ll do. I worried upon taking a big freelance gig proofing a cookbook for America’s Test Kitchen that I’d forget how to mark pages, that my mind would wander, or, worse, that I simply wouldn’t care. A proofreader has to care. Not in a therapeutic, empathic, existentially meaningful way. I’m talking hyphens and commas, line spacing and indents. The goal: perfection.

Here is a world of black or white, right or wrong. And a cookbook? The ultimate in picayunity. The difference between ¼ teaspoon and ½ teaspoon can make or break a recipe and put the company’s reputation in danger, not to mention my career. They care about the water temperature for cooking beans or whether the oven rack position is lower-middle or simply middle. Everything matters. Everything has a formula and a rule. My job is not to edit, not to analyze, just correct errors and point out egregious inconsistencies. I printed out the publisher’s 30-page style sheet, an alphabetical guide to spelling and usage standards. Like "medium-sized" vs. "medium-size" or "celery rib" vs. "celery stalk."

After so many years, how would I adjust to this i-dotting, t-crossing, microscopically focused universe? A few pages in, while tracking a paragraph on Hearty Tuscan Bean Stew, I noticed I was smiling—one of those inside-transforming-into-outside smiles that even Buddhist monks strive for. Bliss and satisfaction. I was wondering, Why is "sauté" accented but "puree" is not? I need to know. I want to know. Check the guidelines. Yes! That’s what they want. What about a compound modifying adjective, which should take an en dash (double the width of a hyphen), such as "paper towel–lined plate"? Yes! It’s there! I love these people! They worried for me. Not only do I not need to feel, but I don’t even need to ponder too much. My proofreader hat now hugging tightly to my dusty proofreader brain, I’m looking forward to a few weeks of finding clear answers, chasing perfection—the ultimate in anti-feeling. What a relief.

My friend hat has been getting a lot of use lately, too. It’s a big red hat, for sure, with a sturdy cap and soft, feminine edges. Strong yet soft enough to wear with my friend Susan, who lost almost everything when her apartment was struck by lightning two weeks ago. Susan lost her home, her sanctuary, and her bearings in the world. She’s suffering and I feel helpless. I can’t turn back the clock, nor restore her beautiful apartment, filled with color and jazz and memories. But I can listen and lend a shoulder and buy her groceries and remind her that life can be random and cruel, and that healing is possible but it will take time.

Susan and I and two other Zamir Chorale singers visited our friend Jody on Thursday evening. Jody’s dying of ovarian cancer. That’s the reality. While we were there, Jody became very ill and her husband, Mark, called 911. How do you talk to a dying friend? We stroked her hair and her back and rubbed her shoulders and told her to hang in there. One of the EMTs who arrived within minutes asked for her arm to take her blood pressure. "You’re gorgeous," Jody said, looking up at him, weakly lifting her hand. He was. We all laughed. What else could we do? We waved goodbye as the ambulance pulled away and Mark followed in his car. As of today, she’s stable. She’s hanging in there. She’s a survivor. But it might not be for long.

On the drive back, we stopped for dinner—life goes on—sang songs in the car, and watched, quietly and in awe, as an enormous, full orange moon rose above the violet horizon against the deep-green hills of the western suburbs.

I don’t know what hat to wear today. It’s sultry-hot and there’s no air to breathe. After I work on the cookbook a little, maybe I’ll take a break. Maybe I’ll head to the beach, wearing my huge, hilarious sombrero, with its itchy rope chinstrap, to protect me from the harsh sun of summer.